Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!

[BlackLightning]

3 hours ago, divica said:

I would say that the reason for becoming a kinslayer should be important...

 

But wether he gets a happy ending or not I think he deserves an ending where his life will have some meaning. And galivating around the north with the wildlings ignoring everything that happened so far is one of the most meaningless and depressing endings possible.

Not really.

If Ned, all of House Stark and pretty much the entire continent of Westeros can suffer on account of Ned not telling Robert the truth and if Jaime's reputation can be forever ruined on account of saving over a million person from its king, then Jon can suffer for killing Dany....for whatever reason.

I hate the show ending too. The fact that certain people on here think that's valid is absolutely insane.

 

[Le Cygne]

It's also horrible how they dehumanized Dany yet humanized Cersei (as much as they can do so, which isn't much, since they like to put down girls, and and they said she was "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man" and never finished her story properly).

Reading Dany's story closely, one can't help but be struck by the importance of Drogo to her identity, and her deep feelings for him, how often she thinks of him, and how important the nicer of the Dothraki traditions have become to her.

I can see GRRM returning to this at the end of her story. If they had only given her some humanity, and let her remember Drogo, and have some sort of hopeful vision of an afterlife, or something to honor the character the audience had come to love for so many seasons.

But no, they had to do the Satanic majesty crap, while Cersei who is one of the most egregious villains in the story stood around like a damsel in distress, because she's "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man"... they are the worst.

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Le Cygne said:

It's also horrible how they dehumanized Dany yet humanized Cersei (as much as they can do so, which isn't much, since they like to put down girls, and and they said she was "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man" and never finished her story properly).

Reading Dany's story closely, one can't help but be struck by the importance of Drogo to her identity, and her deep feelings for him, how often she thinks of him, and how important the nicer of the Dothraki traditions have become to her.

I can see GRRM returning to this at the end of her story. If they had only given her some humanity, and let her remember Drogo, and have some sort of hopeful vision of an afterlife, or something to honor the character the audience had come to love for so many seasons.

But no, they had to do the Satanic majesty crap, while Cersei who is one of the most egregious villains in the story stood around like a damsel in distress, because she's "just a girl who needs the comfort of a man"... they are the worst.

If her character arc was to end in darkness, it would have made far more sense for her to have ended like one of the leaders of the French or Haitian revolutions, or a sort of Simon Bolivar figure, an idealist who went too far in equating opposition with evil, than as some kind of Nazi.  It's the worst kind of lazy writing to just equate someone to Hitler, in order to show that they are bad, and it completely misunderstood her character. Her story was never about racial subjugation, or unhinged conspiracy theories. 

Not to mention that much of Episodes 5 and 6 was almost a scene for scene rip off of Mockingjay. 

[Cas Stark]

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

If her character arc was to end in darkness, it would have made far more sense for her to have ended like one of the leaders of the French or Haitian revolutions, or a sort of Simon Bolivar figure, an idealist who went too far in equating opposition with evil, than as some kind of Nazi.  It's the worst kind of lazy writing to just equate someone to Hitler, in order to show that they are bad, and it completely misunderstood her character. Her story was never about racial subjugation, or unhinged conspiracy theories. 

Not to mention that much of Episodes 5 and 6 was almost a scene for scene rip off of Mockingjay. 

I think that is what they were aiming for, but you can't show that decline in 2 episodes, and you can probably never get that decline right with the two particular showrunners who never had any finesse in their writing, even before they decided to do it all with faces or have characters talk to the audience and tell them how they should view things because they weren't able to 'show' them.  

[SeanF]

21 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I think that is what they were aiming for, but you can't show that decline in 2 episodes, and you can probably never get that decline right with the two particular showrunners who never had any finesse in their writing, even before they decided to do it all with faces or have characters talk to the audience and tell them how they should view things because they weren't able to 'show' them.  

No, you can't;  and, you'd do it by adopting the imagery of the French Revolution, rather than the imagery of Nazism.  It would be a leader standing in the middle of her followers proclaiming that "the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of tyrants" rather than a Nuremberg-type rally.

[Lord Varys]

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

Not to mention that much of Episodes 5 and 6 was almost a scene for scene rip off of Mockingjay. 

Yeah, after watching this stuff a couple of months ago it was quite clear that they adapting ripping off The Hunger Games there, not ASoIaF.

And as @The Dragon Demands and others point out, it seems the whole burning of KL thing was a last minute addition during the shooting process, not something they had in mind since they had been scrapping the previous plot of Cersei as the Mad Queen (which likely would have been the outcome of the plot of the lost child, resulting in Cersei following in Aerys' footsteps, i.e. setting the city up to be burned).

Emilia Clarke insist that Dany is not mad during her mad rampage through the city because she seems to believe Dany is only attacking the Red Keep there, not the entire city, and earlier scenes had Cersei bring people inside the Red Keep to use them as living shields there - something that is completely forgotten later on.

In fact, if you think about the high probability that Jaime is going to be the valonqar who kills Cersei, but the show completely changing that, one cannot but wonder whether they gave Jaime's role there to Jon and Cersei's death (sort of) to Daenerys - in the books I don't expect Jaime to survive murdering Cersei so they can die together, but that they did not want to give to Jon. I mean, if you think about book Cersei death one certainly can see a completely deranged, mad woman there who is actually happy that her beloved twin brother has returned to her and everything is going to be good now. They are not very likely to see each other often or at all before their death scene, especially if they end up in completely different camps (Cersei in Euron's and Jaime in Aegon's and eventually the camp of the good guys who fight the Others).

If you think about it - the books won't have two lovers killing their beloved siblings/spouses because they turned 'evil' or did 'very atrocious things' around the end of the novel. And killing somebody for burning a lot of people is Jaime's thing in the books, not Jon's.

If Dany is going to be murdered and not dying during the fight against the Others (or in childbirth should she ever have a living child) I can see Tyrion murdering her out of jealousy (also an outcome the show hinted at at the end of season 7 when they had Tyrion look very angry during the boat sex scene).

[Cas Stark]

33 minutes ago, SeanF said:

No, you can't;  and, you'd do it by adopting the imagery of the French Revolution, rather than the imagery of Nazism.  It would be a leader standing in the middle of her followers proclaiming that "the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of tyrants" rather than a Nuremberg-type rally.

Again, I wasn't really bothered by the Nuremberg imagery, it is a short cut way to tell the audience that X leader has lost it, is a villain, they are a danger to peace, etc.  it would have been fine if it was paired with showing us how Dany got there, how her personality changed and her decision making became clouded, but they would have needed a season of episodes to do it.  I also don't mind it because Dany has always understood how to use 'image' and symbols, this is why she has 2,000 titles and is always talking about her Targ history, why she re opened the pits and started wearing a Meereen outfit, she instinctively understands pageantry and PR, more so than anyone else in the story except maybe Tywin Lannister.

[Angel Eyes]

40 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Yeah, after watching this stuff a couple of months ago it was quite clear that they adapting ripping off The Hunger Games there, not ASoIaF.

And as @The Dragon Demands and others point out, it seems the whole burning of KL thing was a last minute addition during the shooting process, not something they had in mind since they had been scrapping the previous plot of Cersei as the Mad Queen (which likely would have been the outcome of the plot of the lost child, resulting in Cersei following in Aerys' footsteps, i.e. setting the city up to be burned).

Emilia Clarke insist that Dany is not mad during her mad rampage through the city because she seems to believe Dany is only attacking the Red Keep there, not the entire city, and earlier scenes had Cersei bring people inside the Red Keep to use them as living shields there - something that is completely forgotten later on.

In fact, if you think about the high probability that Jaime is going to be the valonqar who kills Cersei, but the show completely changing that, one cannot but wonder whether they gave Jaime's role there to Jon and Cersei's death (sort of) to Daenerys - in the books I don't expect Jaime to survive murdering Cersei so they can die together, but that they did not want to give to Jon. I mean, if you think about book Cersei death one certainly can see a completely deranged, mad woman there who is actually happy that her beloved twin brother has returned to her and everything is going to be good now. They are not very likely to see each other often or at all before their death scene, especially if they end up in completely different camps (Cersei in Euron's and Jaime in Aegon's and eventually the camp of the good guys who fight the Others).

If you think about it - the books won't have two lovers killing their beloved siblings/spouses because they turned 'evil' or did 'very atrocious things' around the end of the novel. And killing somebody for burning a lot of people is Jaime's thing in the books, not Jon's.

If Dany is going to be murdered and not dying during the fight against the Others (or in childbirth should she ever have a living child) I can see Tyrion murdering her out of jealousy (also an outcome the show hinted at at the end of season 7 when they had Tyrion look very angry during the boat sex scene).

So why did they change that for Cersei? It would have made more sense to have her as the Mad Queen, even keeping with the story that they were telling up to Season 8. 

However, I legitimately believe they planned for Jaime and Cersei to die in each other’s arms as far back as Season 5 (and not as a half-assed explanation for abrupt changes like Sansa’s rape plot and Arya killing the Night King), because the Valonqar line in the prophecy scene in Season 5 is left out.

[Angel Eyes]

Meanwhile I’ve been doing some tabulation of kill numbers for different characters and here’s what I got. Letting animals loose from cages counts, ordering them (Daenerys telling the dragons to kill Pyat Pree) does not. For example:

House Stark

Ned Stark: 7 (5 as Sean Bean, 2 as Robert Aramayo)

Catelyn Tully Stark: 1

Robb Stark: 3

Jon Snow: 442

Sansa Stark: 1

Arya Stark: 410

Bran Stark: 5

Rickon Stark: 0

[divica]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Yeah, after watching this stuff a couple of months ago it was quite clear that they adapting ripping off The Hunger Games there, not ASoIaF.

And as @The Dragon Demands and others point out, it seems the whole burning of KL thing was a last minute addition during the shooting process, not something they had in mind since they had been scrapping the previous plot of Cersei as the Mad Queen (which likely would have been the outcome of the plot of the lost child, resulting in Cersei following in Aerys' footsteps, i.e. setting the city up to be burned).

Emilia Clarke insist that Dany is not mad during her mad rampage through the city because she seems to believe Dany is only attacking the Red Keep there, not the entire city, and earlier scenes had Cersei bring people inside the Red Keep to use them as living shields there - something that is completely forgotten later on.

In fact, if you think about the high probability that Jaime is going to be the valonqar who kills Cersei, but the show completely changing that, one cannot but wonder whether they gave Jaime's role there to Jon and Cersei's death (sort of) to Daenerys - in the books I don't expect Jaime to survive murdering Cersei so they can die together, but that they did not want to give to Jon. I mean, if you think about book Cersei death one certainly can see a completely deranged, mad woman there who is actually happy that her beloved twin brother has returned to her and everything is going to be good now. They are not very likely to see each other often or at all before their death scene, especially if they end up in completely different camps (Cersei in Euron's and Jaime in Aegon's and eventually the camp of the good guys who fight the Others).

If you think about it - the books won't have two lovers killing their beloved siblings/spouses because they turned 'evil' or did 'very atrocious things' around the end of the novel. And killing somebody for burning a lot of people is Jaime's thing in the books, not Jon's.

If Dany is going to be murdered and not dying during the fight against the Others (or in childbirth should she ever have a living child) I can see Tyrion murdering her out of jealousy (also an outcome the show hinted at at the end of season 7 when they had Tyrion look very angry during the boat sex scene).

Pretty good points. Once again showing that something very strange happened between season 7 and 8. The 2 season feel so disjointed… Like they ignored cersei's baby, the hints about boatbaby or the aliance through marriage between jon and danny, that bran isa robot that doesn t want to rule, that arya is a faceless woman, that drogon was shot with one of those  arrows and was just hurt and not instantly killed and so many things… 

The diferences between the 2 season are so big that the only way I can explain them is that in the contract with grrm they had to have certain elements in the end of the show like jon killing dany, danny becoming a villain, bran becoming king and other things like that. Otherwise it just doesnt make sense...

[Lord Varys]

23 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

So why did they change that for Cersei? It would have made more sense to have her as the Mad Queen, even keeping with the story that they were telling up to Season 8.

For a cheap twist? The show was 'Game of Thrones' and the fight against the Others not the climax, unlike it will most likely be with 'A Song of Ice and Fire' were we can expect the Others to be the real and ultimate threat and also the subject of the final confrontation.

In the show Cersei is a villain who is dragged on and on and on. Dealing with her as the big bad wouldn't have ended the show with a twist. In fact, it was clear from the point they made her the queen that she would be crushed eventually. That was predictable as hell.

In the books Cersei won't follow Tommen on the Iron Throne. That will be Aegon and then possibly Euron and Daenerys herself. If Cersei remains in the game until the very end then as a power of destruction at Euron's side, possibly even trying to thwart the attempts of the good guys against the Others. For that she will be punished in the end. But we cannot get a scenario where KL is still intact after the Second Dance and the War for the Dawn. The city may even be sacked multiple times - Aegon might gain it peacefully, but Euron would sack it if he ever sat the Iron Throne (and the chances for that are not that bad if you consider Aeron's dreams), and if Dany were to take it from Euron or Aegon were to take it back from him it would involve violence and battle.

George himself told us there would be multiple pretenders on the Iron Throne after Tommen before the series is done.

23 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

However, I legitimately believe they planned for Jaime and Cersei to die in each other’s arms as far back as Season 5 (and not as a half-assed explanation for abrupt changes like Sansa’s rape plot and Arya killing the Night King), because the Valonqar line in the prophecy scene in Season 5 is left out.

Sure, but I'm talking about book events here. If Cersei is killed by her brother-lover Jaime at the end of the series, then it makes little sense to give exactly the same plot to Jon and Dany. They may have decided not to go with the Jaime kills Cersei plot early on (although that's not clear - they could have left out the valonqar thing then simply because they didn't know what they wanted to do with them in the end), but this doesn't mean they decided to use that plot with Jon and Dany at the same time. Could be that the original death scene for Cersei-Jaime was them being together in the throne room and Dany and Drogon crashing in and burning them, possibly after Jaime had just convinced Cersei to yield.

The known abandoned plot about Cersei's miscarriage clearly was there to take all hope from Cersei. To finally cut the ties between her and Jaime and to put Cersei in a state of mind where she just wants to kill as many people as she can before she herself dies - this is completely absent from the final version where the focus is on Dany's madness, not Cersei's. Cersei's actions in the show make no sense. She has a love child of her brother in her womb. Why would she prefer death and destruction to a future for this child?

The idea of there being two mad queens, two women who end up murdering thousands or tens of thousands of innocents is just, well, not very likely. Cersei clearly has a plot of destruction ahead of her but even right now she is not even remotely at a point where she would burn tens of thousands of innocents or turn her back on humanity itself. Although I've to admit we have to wait and see the mind of the post-walk Cersei. We haven't met her yet. But while Cersei's children yet live and she still has the hopes of making things up with Jaime she is not going to be completely lost.

Dany is nowhere near a scenario of madness, and she will play a crucial role in the fight against the Others. She is not the character to walk in Cersei's shoes - as she did in the show.

[SeanF]

54 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Again, I wasn't really bothered by the Nuremberg imagery, it is a short cut way to tell the audience that X leader has lost it, is a villain, they are a danger to peace, etc.  it would have been fine if it was paired with showing us how Dany got there, how her personality changed and her decision making became clouded, but they would have needed a season of episodes to do it.  I also don't mind it because Dany has always understood how to use 'image' and symbols, this is why she has 2,000 titles and is always talking about her Targ history, why she re opened the pits and started wearing a Meereen outfit, she instinctively understands pageantry and PR, more so than anyone else in the story except maybe Tywin Lannister.

One of the many oddities is that Daenerys was supposedly cracking up and becoming paranoid - even as her ostensible allies and supporters were actively betraying her in various ways. 

Over the course of a season, you could portray a vicious cycle of unjustified suspicion, leading to betrayal, leading to mounting suspicion etc.  Over two episodes it just seemed that Daenerys was being gaslit.

[Cas Stark]

20 minutes ago, SeanF said:

One of the many oddities is that Daenerys was supposedly cracking up and becoming paranoid - even as her ostensible allies and supporters were actively betraying her in various ways. 

Over the course of a season, you could portray a vicious cycle of unjustified suspicion, leading to betrayal, leading to mounting suspicion etc.  Over two episodes it just seemed that Daenerys was being gaslit.

Well, you would need entire episodes for things they threw off in one line.  She's not loved here.  Show us, and I don't mean making the Northerners and Sansa irrationally hate her.  There was no reason either for Varys to betray her when he did, he never killed the mad king for fuck's sake, or Joff or Cersei!  if he betrayed her after she committed some massacre and then went on a public rant against her 'enemies' and threatened again to burn cities to the ground, okay maybe, but that whole thing was in the wrong order. Perhaps if we had seen her obsess over why the people of KL had not ovethrown Cersei for a few episodes and had started saying repeatedly that she was going to burn it to the ground, where we as the audience might have thought, hey she won't really do this...and then she did.   Maybe if she had pardoned Tarly and then he stabbed her in the back somehow.  Of course if they had any artistry they could have paralleled things that she did in Essos which worked, but failed in Westeros, but this would have taken a lot of planning and a skill they never possessed. The entire last two seasons were complete clusterfucks of stupidity, so I don't know how you'd even begin to chart something that would have worked, because you'd have to start off with a reason that is believable of why she didn't go to KL with her full force and end the thing in a weekend, and you'd have to have not had Tyrion give uniformly terrible advice for 2 seasons on and on.

Remember when all the critics in season 5 said that the show was improving on the books and how awesome it was that now they were free of the books and could chart their own direction.  HAHAHHAHA.  

[divica]

8 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Remember when all the critics in season 5 said that the show was improving on the books and how awesome it was that now they were free of the books and could chart their own direction.  HAHAHHAHA.  

that aged pretty badly...

8 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Of course if they had any artistry they could have paralleled things that she did in Essos which worked, but failed in Westeros, but this would have taken a lot of planning and a skill they never possessed. 

The problem is that the things she did in essos also failed until they stoped caring about telling a story (when the reached the end of the books).

It is only after that than things go 100% in danny's favor and there is no more disputes about her rule… Her whole affair with the dothriaki makes 0 sense. How mereen sudenly started to behave like she wanted makes 0 sense. Hell, I have no idea why all the rich slavers in essos didn t hire assassins to kill danny. 

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, divica said:

that aged pretty badly...

The problem is that the things she did in essos also failed until they stoped caring about telling a story (when the reached the end of the books).

It is only after that than things go 100% in danny's favor and there is no more disputes about her rule… Her whole affair with the dothriaki makes 0 sense. How mereen sudenly started to behave like she wanted makes 0 sense. Hell, I have no idea why all the rich slavers in essos didn t hire assassins to kill danny. 

Her governing stuff mostly failed, but she was able to get 'the people' to love her, she liberated the slaves and they remained loyal even in the face of starvation and disease...she might have tried to 'liberate' the small folk and find out they reacted very differently.  The unsullied remained loyal.  She could try to recruit some Westerosi soldiers but fail again because the cultures are so different.

[divica]

14 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Her governing stuff mostly failed, but she was able to get 'the people' to love her, she liberated the slaves and they remained loyal even in the face of starvation and disease...she might have tried to 'liberate' the small folk and find out they reacted very differently.  The unsullied remained loyal.  She could try to recruit some Westerosi soldiers but fail again because the cultures are so different.

The problem is that the loyalty that the freedmen and unsulied have to her isn t normal. They are blind followers that would do anything for her. It is a cult… It can't be replicated unless people are in dire circunstances. And the smalfolk and soldiers in westeros aren t living a desperate life.

I think they could have showed that clash. People showing danny that just because he has dragons she isn t a messiah. That she is a flawed person. That dragons don t make her someone that deserves blind loyalty. And then they could have danny not accepting this and reacting poorly. That she doesn t want to be a queen but a benevolent tyrant.

 

ps book danny isn t like this. at least not yet.

[SeanF]

46 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Well, you would need entire episodes for things they threw off in one line.  She's not loved here.  Show us, and I don't mean making the Northerners and Sansa irrationally hate her.  There was no reason either for Varys to betray her when he did, he never killed the mad king for fuck's sake, or Joff or Cersei!  if he betrayed her after she committed some massacre and then went on a public rant against her 'enemies' and threatened again to burn cities to the ground, okay maybe, but that whole thing was in the wrong order. Perhaps if we had seen her obsess over why the people of KL had not ovethrown Cersei for a few episodes and had started saying repeatedly that she was going to burn it to the ground, where we as the audience might have thought, hey she won't really do this...and then she did.   Maybe if she had pardoned Tarly and then he stabbed her in the back somehow.  Of course if they had any artistry they could have paralleled things that she did in Essos which worked, but failed in Westeros, but this would have taken a lot of planning and a skill they never possessed. The entire last two seasons were complete clusterfucks of stupidity, so I don't know how you'd even begin to chart something that would have worked, because you'd have to start off with a reason that is believable of why she didn't go to KL with her full force and end the thing in a weekend, and you'd have to have not had Tyrion give uniformly terrible advice for 2 seasons on and on.

Remember when all the critics in season 5 said that the show was improving on the books and how awesome it was that now they were free of the books and could chart their own direction.  HAHAHHAHA.  

In fact, any leader would surely have concluded by the middle of Season 7 that Tyrion was actively betraying her in favour of his siblings.  

[Cas Stark]

13 minutes ago, SeanF said:

In fact, any leader would surely have concluded by the middle of Season 7 that Tyrion was actively betraying her in favour of his siblings.  

It was stupidity piled onto stupidity.  Why would Tyrion, who has had his sister's number since season 1, suddenly, decide she's totes trustworthy and will totally not do what she has done every other time in the series, which is back stab her allies?  Or, he forgot everything he learned from the battle of the blackwater about how superior numbers won the day, ahem, and secret ways into the city, ahem.  Just brutally stupid all of it.  

Better writers would have been able to show us the duality of her personality through the whole series, her desire to be just and help people juxtaposed with 'fire and blood/blood of the dragon' expediency and ruthlessness'.  Better writers and planners would have shown us how over time she lost the former and came to embody the later.  Alas, it was not to be. 

[Mystical]

18 hours ago, divica said:

But even if he gets there. How can someone think he would be a good hand of the king?

In the end of the day he is a tywin in the making with the trauma of being a dwarf hated by his dad… And then we add the fact that people know he is a kinslayer and think he is a kingslayer. Nobody in westeros will ever respect him. And if the lannister fall then even if gets to be the head of his familly he will have much less power than he expected and the whole of westeros will hate him for being a lannister...

What makes you think anyone in Westeros will think he'd be a good Hand? I'm pretty sure no one would. It didn't even make sense for show!Tyrion and he is a saint compared to his book part. Even show Tyrion supported the illegitimate Lannister regime, he was convicted of killing the King who was also his kin and then killed his father, so double kinslaying. And to top it off he was Hand of the woman who burned down, give or take, a million people. Then he hired someone to kill his Queen, making him a double kingslayer. But of course he told no one this part. No one would listen to anything this guy has to say and no one would even think to suggest him as part of the counsel, much less as Hand. The only way he would be allowed at court would be as the royal bedpan scrubber. And that's what should have happened in the freaking show (if D&D had any understanding of this world at all).

Tyrion and Cersei are both Tywin, the only difference is that Cersei is a lot dumber. And I don't remember Tywin having a good end...

[BlackLightning]

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

For a cheap twist? The show was 'Game of Thrones' and the fight against the Others not the climax, unlike it will most likely be with 'A Song of Ice and Fire' were we can expect the Others to be the real and ultimate threat and also the subject of the final confrontation.

In the show Cersei is a villain who is dragged on and on and on. Dealing with her as the big bad wouldn't have ended the show with a twist. In fact, it was clear from the point they made her the queen that she would be crushed eventually. That was predictable as hell.

In the books Cersei won't follow Tommen on the Iron Throne. That will be Aegon and then possibly Euron and Daenerys herself.

I'm going to have to stop you right there. Why do you keep forgetting about Myrcella? It seems to be a bad habit of yours.

The prophecy explicitly says that Cersei will have THREE children who will be adorned with first golden crowns and then golden shrouds. Three. Not Two. Three. Three includes Myrcella. Myrcella will be Queen before she dies.

I'm not saying that she'll be Queen for an extended amount of time. I think that she'll be Westeros' version of England's Nine-Day-Queen.

To your other point about Euron taking King's Landing and the Iron Throne from Aegon. If Euron takes King's Landing and the Iron Throne from Aegon, Aegon is dead. I don't can't envision a scenario in which Aegon lives to see Euron sit the Iron Throne and "rule" (re: terrorize) King's Landing, much less be able to fight to win it back. That's Daenerys' job. She's the slayer of lies and Stannis, Aegon and Euron all seem to be the lies.

I definitely agree though. When Daenerys, Jon and friends move against King's Landing, it's going to be an ugly, bloody affair. That's when I see King's Landing being destroyed. Either with dragonfire, wildfire or a horrific monster battle where Drogon is pitted against one of his brothers or against one or more of these deep sea monstrosities (much more likely) Patchface keeps harping on about.

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, but I'm talking about book events here. If Cersei is killed by her brother-lover Jaime at the end of the series, then it makes little sense to give exactly the same plot to Jon and Dany. They may have decided not to go with the Jaime kills Cersei plot early on (although that's not clear - they could have left out the valonqar thing then simply because they didn't know what they wanted to do with them in the end), but this doesn't mean they decided to use that plot with Jon and Dany at the same time. Could be that the original death scene for Cersei-Jaime was them being together in the throne room and Dany and Drogon crashing in and burning them, possibly after Jaime had just convinced Cersei to yield.

The known abandoned plot about Cersei's miscarriage clearly was there to take all hope from Cersei. To finally cut the ties between her and Jaime and to put Cersei in a state of mind where she just wants to kill as many people as she can before she herself dies - this is completely absent from the final version where the focus is on Dany's madness, not Cersei's. Cersei's actions in the show make no sense. She has a love child of her brother in her womb. Why would she prefer death and destruction to a future for this child?

The idea of there being two mad queens, two women who end up murdering thousands or tens of thousands of innocents is just, well, not very likely. Cersei clearly has a plot of destruction ahead of her but even right now she is not even remotely at a point where she would burn tens of thousands of innocents or turn her back on humanity itself. Although I've to admit we have to wait and see the mind of the post-walk Cersei. We haven't met her yet. But while Cersei's children yet live and she still has the hopes of making things up with Jaime she is not going to be completely lost.

Dany is nowhere near a scenario of madness, and she will play a crucial role in the fight against the Others. She is not the character to walk in Cersei's shoes - as she did in the show.

The idea of there being two mad queens (aka ten women) who end up directly or indirectly murdering at least a million people between the two of them as they battle each other is also deeply misogynistic and very nihilistic.

I mean that's one of the things that really bothered me about the last two episodes? What is this? A cautionary tale about what happens when women are given power with Sansa as the token "exception."

2 hours ago, Mystical said:

What makes you think anyone in Westeros will think he'd be a good Hand? I'm pretty sure no one would. It didn't even make sense for show!Tyrion and he is a saint compared to his book part. Even show Tyrion supported the illegitimate Lannister regime, he was convicted of killing the King who was also his kin and then killed his father, so double kinslaying. And to top it off he was Hand of the woman who burned down, give or take, a million people. Then he hired someone to kill his Queen, making him a double kingslayer. But of course he told no one this part. No one would listen to anything this guy has to say and no one would even think to suggest him as part of the counsel, much less as Hand. The only way he would be allowed at court would be as the royal bedpan scrubber. And that's what should have happened in the freaking show (if D&D had any understanding of this world at all).

Tyrion and Cersei are both Tywin, the only difference is that Cersei is a lot dumber. And I don't remember Tywin having a good end...

Finally someone gets it!!!!

Tyrion and Cersei are going to have bad ends. While it is minutely possible that Tyrion will survive the series proper (only for his death to be reported/told in the epilogue), he is not going to survive the series without becoming a full

The clues about Tyrion have been there since A Clash of Kings. Tyrion himself called himself Tywin writ small multiple times in A Storm of Swords. Gemma Lannister said that Tyrion is Tywin and that Tyrion's return would be very bad for all of Westeros in A Feast for Crows.